


Foolish Presumptions

by GamLamLudi



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Injury, F/M, Mild Gore, Pre-Romance, Pre-Timeskip, Sothis Paralogue, Spoilers, post-major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 21:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GamLamLudi/pseuds/GamLamLudi
Summary: Expanding upon the Sothis Paralogue, similar to the event but covers some areas I felt needed to be focused on more, be forewarned.I had this paralogue before a major character death scene but because it made more sense post-character death please avoid reading until you get to post-timeskip in the game if you do not wish to be spoiled.





	Foolish Presumptions

“Are you awake?” Sothis asked, it was a bit of a redundant question when she was staring down at Byleth.

Byleth had been a bit restless since they went to the red canyon, it felt oddly familiar but she couldn’t quite place her hand on why, for some reason since her father’s death, she was restless about knowing more about him now that she never got the chance, despite spending a few weeks pouring over anything in his study, she couldn’t find anything specific outside of small mentions of the red canyon.

“Yeah.” She finally responded, “Just thinking…”

“About the red canyon.” Sothis asked, Byleth’s expression was enough for her to confirm her suspicions, “me too… I keep feeling like that place is familiar to me.”

“alright then.” Byleth said resolutely, she got up, grabbed her sword and jacket, then proceeded to open the door.

“Wait what are you doing now?” Sothis gave Byleth a quizzical look.

“Heading there.”

“Alone?”

“The red canyon isn’t known for being a good place for bandits to hide out, too much open space.” She didn’t want to inconvenience the others, or have to explain to them why she wanted to go there in the first place. If it had any connection to her father, she wanted to know what it was.

The biggest difficulty would be to get out without being seen, “Sothis, would you mind searching around the area for me?”

“What?! I’d get caught you…” it then occurred to her that Byleth was the only one that could see her, “Oh, yeah I can check around since you’re too heavy footed.” She grumbled about really not being a ghost before scouting the area.

It took her a moment before finally shouting, “coast is clear!” Byleth hurried to Sothis’ spot and continued forward, only nearly getting caught by someone. She reversed time once to pick a fight with a cat enough to make it run and fool the guard near the entrance to the forest.

At that point they were nearly scot-free, a small thought in the back of her mind that struck in the middle of it all was that she may have forgotten to lock her door. Pushing said thought aside, she knew it would be too risky to go back and do so.

“So do you think we’ll find anything there?” Byleth asked.

“it’s possible.” Sothis shrugged, “But it’s gonna be one hell of a story to explain why we were gone all night.”

“We’ll be fine.” Byleth stated with uncanny certainty, Sothis simply hummed uncertainly to her response.

It was almost daybreak by the time they got to the red canyon, Byleth’s head began to pang a bit, it felt like she had words on the tip of her tongue but it didn’t quite form. Small flashes of something came to mind but it was jumbled and nonsensical.

“You saw that too?” Sothis asked, she seemed to be suffering similar symptoms, Byleth nodded and continued forward. They walked further in and spotted a giant portion of a wall blown out, her headache got worse. Nausea began to form in the pit of her stomach, she didn’t know why but the feeling was getting to near breaking point and fast.

“We should continue.” She muttered, but her trek was cut short by the sound of a monstrous howl.

“Please tell me that was your stomach.” For as long as she remembered, Byleth never felt hungry, though she would eat, she never felt compelled to do so, something that made her father completely perplexed, particularly when she went a full week without eating. All they had was mushrooms and tomato soup, something she refused to eat, so it wasn’t surprising when some of the others in the merc group began to wonder if she was even human, the thought had come to her many times. 

“You’re one weird kid.” Sothis replied, “You really didn’t eat for a week?”

“You’ve never had tomato mushroom soup.” Byleth replied, the very thought made her stomach lurch, the time wasn’t convenient for talking about soup, especially because that noise wasn’t some normal creature. Within seconds, some monstrous wolves came into view, Byleth prepped her blade and readied for a fight.

Something was off about the monstrous beast, it chased after her with an unending rage, she barely scraped by the sequence of attacks only to be struck down by a blow from behind. Another was quickly on her tail, she blew up the ground behind her and used the rebound to distance herself from the two-no three creatures.

“We shouldn’t have come alone.” Sothis replied, she wasn’t able to physically fight, Byleth felt like a fool, she just wanted to know more. The third beast charged her, this one looked similar to Miklan and just as ferocious. Looping the sword of the creator around one of the beasts neck, she grabbed the tip of the blade, flew back using wind and cleaved its head from its shoulders.

She barely avoided the poison shot from the crest beast and felt a strike to her leg which threw her off balance once more. If only she had decided to wear more protective gear. The gash would easily incapacitate her once the adrenaline wore off, for now she was numb to the pain and immediately got back up and pierced the creature straight in the mouth as it roared.

Worst came to worst; she’d go back in time if she couldn’t take down the crest beast before her nerves kicked in but she knew better than to recklessly use Sothis’ power. The beast roared, shooting globs of poison in every direction, she took the chance to strike it’s shoulder causing a large enough gash in it’s front and hind leg to slow it’s movement.

The eerie bird-like cry echoed in the distance, “Must’ve been calling for reinforcements.” Byleth cursed, there was no chance she’d be able to survive both the birds and crest beast. She prepared to go back in time only to realize the she had used the power too much recently.

*bam*

She felt her feet come clean out from under her as the beast reared up it’s paw and struck down, she reared her sword up and cut through it’s fingers, one of the claws stabbing into her sword arm.

Blast.

The nerve pain was beginning to overwhelm her, if only she hadn’t thought about going back in time. Byleth rolled out with barely enough time to avoid a strike from the bird but took a third hit from the beast, this time it was the poison spit, it began to burn the wound on her arm and leg even more, she gritted her teeth to hold back the pain and shot a feeble wind spell at the bird in hopes of sending it flying. Instead the bird was simply kept in place, her eyes began to glaze over from the poison and pain.

“Professor!” The bird cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground. Byleth was beginning to feel numb, she looked hazily up at the figure that just saved her, barely recognizing the voice.

“Dimitri?” In almost an inhuman way, Dimitri was able to lop off the wing of another bird monster and strike the inside of the beast’s mouth.

“Mercedes, tend to the Professor!” He cursed as the beast struck out again. Byleth didn’t even register Mercedes’ soft touch on her face.

“Oh dear.” She said in a calming voice, “you’re not doing well professor.” A blue light radiated around her arm and leg, the nerve pain began to come back in force, she almost preferred the numbed sensation. The wound closed slowly as her senses began to come back to her. Dedue and Sylvain were covering Dimitri while Felix was off picking his own battles alongside Annette.

Ingrid was covering for Mercedes, worry and confusion clear across her face, “How is she doing Mercedes?”

“She’s coming to.” Mercedes replied shortly, clearly focused on her task at hand.

The battle was over within minutes, a few of the group had been injured by the beasts but no fatalities, something Byleth silently thanked the gods for.

“Why were you out here on your own?” Ingrid asked.

“I get ladies need their alone time, but I never figured it was out in the middle of the red canyon?” Sylvain almost had a scorning look on his face, it only made her feel worse.

“Well…” she started but hesitated as she knew talking about this place would seem like she’s gone insane.

While Felix was having his own tantrum about her risking her life over nothing, Dimitri was oddly silent. His expression was passive but his hands were shaking to the point of almost dropping his spear.

“Right now our priority is to get out of here.” His calm voice belied the rest of his body language, “Who knows if more beasts will come, Dedue if you would.” He gestured to her; she knew he probably didn’t trust himself right now.

They made it back to the forest, while the others were searching for some stuff to collect to create an excuse for the reason why all of them were missing, Dimitri was close by sharpening his spear, she couldn’t see his expression behind the greasy bangs.

The silence was deafening.

“How did you know where I went?” She asked, it only occurred to her a second later she probably should have thanked him. “And thank you…”

Dimitri was still quiet, the whetstone in his hand was clattering against the spear more than it should have, he was still shaking.

“I was unable to sleep so I went outside to see the stars, I noticed your door was slightly ajar.” He started; his voice monotonous. “It was Felix and Ashe that were able to track your footsteps…”

Byleth remembered someone mentioning Felix was a good hunter, Ashe must’ve had good eyes to be able to spot them, especially since a storm was coming in. “I see…” she couldn’t bring herself to strike up conversation, she had pulled the dumbest action of the century and had the goddesses own luck to still be alive for it.

“why…” he finally looked at her, he struggled to hold himself back, “why didn’t you tell us.”

Byleth looked down at her hands, what could she say, Red canyon felt familiar, sleep walking, saw someone that clearly wasn’t there…

Dimitri finally walked over to her and grabbed both of her shoulders looking her in the eye, “do you know how close you came to death professor…” his eyes carried the same sadness they had when he talked about death.

“It was a tactical error.” She replied, “I overheard a rumor about something suspicious at the red canyon, the place is too open for bandits so I figured…”

“That’d you’d go alone?! In the middle of the night!” He looked away for a second before attempting to compose himself.

“I didn’t wish to impose on anyone, it was simply something I wanted to check out.”

“It wouldn’t have been an imposition.” He grabbed her hand and stroked it lightly, it was clear he was on the edge of a breakdown, “if you had died… I have no idea what I-- we would’ve…” he stopped himself short.

“I’m sorry…” she muttered and patted him on the head, the look in his eye was almost unbearable at this point, the wounded puppy look was particularly effective for making her feel guilty, “If I had known this was going to happen I would’ve never gone.”

“Please promise me you’ll never go out by yourself again, it’s better to just be safe than sorry.”

“Yeah, Dimitri was about to go all out when he found you pitted against two hounds and a crest beast.” Sylvain spoke breaking up their little moment. “And while some girls look sexy with scars, you wouldn’t be one of them.”

Byleth gave him a scorning look, “Or a frown on your face.” The crease got deeper.

“She looks fine regardless Sylvain.” He replied absentmindedly to his suggestive comments, “I understand that your father’s death was hard on you, but please don’t forget that the academy would be empty without you.” He gave her a sad smile.

“I promise I’ll be more careful from now on.” She really felt like a fool now, getting lectured by one of her own students, but a part of her also knew that he was right, she didn’t want to lose anyone else to senseless deaths.

**Author's Note:**

> I felt the scene didn't do justice in really embellishing how serious the situation got regarding the beasts attacking Byleth and the reason why she would go alone and having the protagonist get lectured for their behavior afterward.  
Also I haven't played anything but the blue lions route, is sothis' paralogue seen in both GD and BE routes as well?


End file.
